Celebrating B Movies, Cult Films, and Indie Classics.

I discovered this film when I brought over some movies to watch when I was visiting my mom.

One of these movies, happened to be The Jerk, an awesome slap stick movie that is stylistically similar to the movie Forrest Gump (1994)

Written by Steve Martin (Roxanne, Three Amigos) and directed by Carl Reiner (Generation) and starring Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters (Slaves of New York, Annie) and Catlin Adams (Kojak).

The Jerk tells the story of Navin Johnson (Martin) a man of limited intelligence who is the adopted son of a poor Mississippi black family, who when he reaches his 18th birthday, decides to explore the rest of the world.

In the various places he stops off at, people take advantage of his good-natured naivete. When one day just by mistake he ends up bumbling in to an invention to stop glasses from sliding off of people’s faces.

Now with money pouring in from this invention, it is a literal rags-to-riches story in the hilarious style that comedians of the day could pull off so magically.

Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters

What I didn’t know at this time was that this would be the last big screen appearance for Maurice Evans (Planet of the Apes.)

With that said, of course, Steve Martin went on to be a comic genius with such hilarious films as the Father of the Bride series and the Cheaper By The Dozen series. Bernadette Peters would also go on to be in many great TV shows, such as Grey’s Anatomy and Rob Reiner would go on to film many classics both in front of and behind the camera, such as Ocean’s Eleven.

If your looking for a funny light-hearted fun time, then you might wanna try The Jerk. It is a truly fun good time.